Tutorial 3 · The Effective Mental Health Consultant
Service Array
Types of Consultation
To optimize the impact of ECMHC, consultants should offer both child/family-centered consultation as well as programmatic consultation. Child or family-centered consultation is designed to address the factors that contribute to an individual child's (and/or family's) difficulties in functioning well in the early childhood setting. This type of consultation is typically provided to staff and families and is often initiated by concerns about an individual child's problematic behavior.
In contrast, programmatic consultation is designed to enhance the overall quality of an ECE program and/or to assist the program in solving a specific issue that affects more than one child, staff member, and/or family. This type of consultation is typically provided to program staff and administrators.
Providing both types of consultation helps to ensure that services address the mental health needs of all the children in the ECE program — not just those with identified mental health challenges. Further, this two-pronged approach ensures that children's mental health needs are met in the short- and long-term, with consultants working simultaneously to tackle current issues while strengthening programs' overall ability to foster mental wellness on an ongoing basis. Frequently, mental health consultants will apply both child/family-centered and programmatic consultation simultaneously to the same situation or need (Duran et al., 2009).
Promotion, Prevention and Intervention
Given that a fundamental goal of ECMHC is to support optimal mental health
for all young children, an effective consultant must facilitate implementation
of activities that address the full spectrum of young children's mental
health needs. This includes activities that
- Promote healthy social/emotional development
- Prevent mental health problems, particularly for children at-risk
- Provide early intervention for young children demonstrating challenging or troubling behaviors
This website was made possible by grant number 90YD0268 from the Office of Head Start, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views or policies of the funding agency nor does publication in any way constitute an endorsement by the funding agency.
